15" PB - With Superdrive or Combodrive + External DVD-RW?

[m-dogg]

Hello - I'm debating a new PB with superdrive vs. buying PB combodrive and an external DVD-RW drive. I don't see myself burning DVDs on the road, but I was wondering if anyone has any feedback/pro's & con's of going one route vs the other.

It seems like you can get a better/faster external, but would they work well with iMovie & iDVD?

Thanks in advance!

[tdhurst]

External DVD burners are both faster and more expensive, SHOULD (not guaranteed) work with iMovie and iDVD. However, in all honesty, the best reason to have a laptop is completely portability. I have the 17 inch powerbook, and the greatest thing about it is that all I have to do is close it, stuff it and the power adapter in my bag, and I have every single piece of hardware I need to do whatever I want to do. yes, the dvd burner is slower (and I do have an external 7200rpm hd for heavy video editing), but the tradeoff in portability is well worth it. And because of the decreased amount of time it takes to get things done (because I don't have to wait until I get home to my desktop to do something) I have plenty of time to let a dvd burn for 30+ minutes.
But....if speed is what you're after, an external dvd should be okay.

[MacUser1]

truthfully, i don't know of any external DVD burner (whether it's +R or -R) that works with iDVD. there used to be one from a company, but apple forced them to stop releasing the patch that allows external DVD burners to work with iDVD. as a powerbook superdrive owner, i would recommend purchasing the superdrive equipped powerbook

[realityisterror]

if you don't need to burn on the road, you probably don't need to burn often. if that's the case, don't worry about the internal being slow. i've never burned a dvd, and for a while i thought 2x was like 2x on a CD (which i think means 2 times the speed of a floppy :eek: ), but that's not true. 2x and 4x aren't very slow really. if you need to burn a dvd every week it may be worth your while to buy an external 8x burner. i've heard that there's already a 12x burner out there, but i'm not sure about internal vs. external.

hope this could help,
reality